A Nun's Life
The Dominican nuns, the first branch of the Dominican family founded by St. Dominic, celebrate their 800th anniversary this year. NPR interviewed Sr. Mary Dominic, OP, and she tells a bit about her vocation - her call from God that led her to enter the cloistered Dominican community of the Monastery of the Angels, overlooking Hollywood. There, 22 nuns pray for the world, especially for Hollywood. Listen to the interview here. She has a wonderful comment or two about the importance of prayer which we in the world need to hear in this busy, busy season.
posted by Fr. Mike, O.P. @ 11:31 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Thanks for this little piece! I just heard a great vocations podcast where the lay vocations director of Nashville spoke with the host about vocations awareness. He emphasizes universal vocation to holiness; 4 primary calls: married, consecrated single, religious life, priesthood. Check it out:
http://www.vocationscast.com/
He mentions the Dominican sisters of Nashville.
Thanks for posting this little interview with one of the nuns whom we don't often hear about in the Order. For some reason, whenever someone posts something about the nuns it seems reference always has to be made to the active sisters like Nashville or Ann Arbor. I can never figure out why as the cloistered nuns and the the active sisters, while part of the same Family of St. Dominic live 2 different vocations.
Dear Anonymous,
This is in response to your posting of today also. Yours comes across as non-partisan so I take it at face value and offer my thoughts in like manner.
First, I'm not a Dominican but have reason to have met quite a few, especially in recent years. One though (RIP), whom I'd gotten to know best, himself was a Dominican student brother back in the "bad old days" as he called them ('50s). So he became very knowledgeable on Church matters, among other things.
He would answer, I think, something like this: The cloistered nuns (although addressed as "Sister") live a de facto (but not de jure) monastic life, notwithstanding that the OP is a mendicant (and not monastic) order. That is, at least the friars were founded to evangelize the cities/towns as such were re-flowering in the 12th & 13th centuries, but as a practical matter they'd have to modify a true monastic observance that up until those days was the only kind of religious life in the Church... Anyway, the cloistered nuns ("2nd order") apparently represent the way that St. Dominic and founders of other mendicant orders (OFM etc., O. Carm etc., O.S.A., O.S.M., who else?) thought was appropriate for women religious affiliated with their friars ("1st order"). That is, the women did not live in similar way as the mendicant friars (say as "sorors"?) but rather as the already existing nuns of the established monastic orders (OSB, etc.). Perhaps there would be one one difference in terms of location, that is the OP nuns perhaps were only in cities/towns and not in remote areas like the monks (although secular civilization often would start developing around monasteries anyway!). But otherwise, they would be more like their counterparts in the monastic orders than the friars in the mendicant orders.
You've probably also heard of the OP (and other mendicant order) "3rd order", and wouldn't it be convenient for such to be a later addition for the "active sisters"? Unfortunately, as I've already learned, that's not the case - it's for the laity affiliated with these orders (monastics, at least OSBs, say "oblates", not including claustarals). The word "tertiaries" sometimes is used, or at least used to be (certainly for the Jesuit counterpart), but that's just the Latin-based version of "3rd" anyway. By the way, it's my understanding that St. Catherine of S actually was a "3rd", not a nun, although I have heard that she dressed as one or similarly. So, are you getting confused yet?
Getting back to your question, what about the "active sisters"? It would be better if you would ask one of them, I think, but for now I'd guess that they are not "4th order" at all but rather a later development, affiliated with the OP (and other mendicants) that came about when it was more feasible, at least from a safety standpoint, for women to be active "in the world". It would not surprise me if these "active sisters" really got going after the Protestant Reformation when yet another form of religious life developed - the "modern congregations" - neither monastic nor mendicant. But I won't bet any $, much less my life, on that as before long some Dominican sister may prove me wrong!
In any case, the vocations - strictly speaking - all are different, with secular/diocesan priests being different yet. But then there has been a lot of "overlapping" over the centuries, just as the monks often were missionaries long before there was an OP, etc. As far as I know, though, cloistered nuns stay pretty close to what they were founded for. So you're not likely even to meet them in the first place. I suspect that they don't want much publicity anyway, given their (and strict monks') "hidden life" within the cloister. They work and pray while seeking God, usually as a community (cenobites) but sometimes as hermits (anchorites). Conversely, people who feel called to the active ministry may think instead that publicity is good for their ministry, say, to encourage lay involvement, etc. (why don't you ask, though).
So, while there are a lot of "brand names" out there, what it comes down to is that at least several different types of vocations are different pathways toward the same, universal, call to holiness. They emphasize one, or even more, aspects of the Lord's own life of active ministry, hidden prayer, physical work, teaching, and so on. It may be a cliche', but there seems no better analogy than a body with different parts, such that all the parts need to work together in a healthy way for the body as a whole to be healthy. Indeed, as I understand it, what Vatican II emphasized more was the "Body of Christ" rather than "People of God". Or at least that's what one of the "experts" who was there has been quoted as saying.
Anyway, hI ope this has helped somewhat.
Happy Advent,
(still)
Tom Havey
Hi! I found your blog via google alerts. To answer Tom, we nuns are the "first born of St. Dominic" and are celebrating our 800th anniversary this year. We are in the heart of the holy preaching and have a jurdical bond with the friars. It is the Friars and the Nuns together that make up the Order of Preachers. The other branches of Sisters are affiliated, aggregated, etc. to the Order of Preachers and are truly Dominican but do not share the same relationship as the friars and nuns, both who make a profession of obedience to the Master of the Order.
We are monastic women in an apostolic order--a hybrid, you might say. We share more in common, though, with Benedictines and Cistercians than with Carmelites and Poor Clares.
So, when St. Thomas says that the "mixed life" is better than the purely contemplative life, one can also include the nuns in this because it is our manner of being not our manner of doing that makes us part of the Order.
You can learn more about the nuns at several of the monastery sites such as our own:
www.nunsopsummit.org
www.monialesop.blogspot.com
God bless you!
Sr. Mary Catharine, OP
Novice mistress
Post a Comment
<< Home